PGA Tour of Australasia begins East Coast Swing
Kazuma Kobori exciting addition to the professional ranks – photo APAC
The 2023 / 2024 Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia begins its ‘East Coast Swing’ this week when the Queensland PGA Championship gets underway on Thursday at the Nudgee Golf Club in Brisbane’s east.
After events in Papua New Guinea, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia, the schedule now includes six consecutive events leading into Xmas on the Eastern Seaboard and the opportunity for several new recruits to the professional ranks to get their careers in the paid ranks underway.
Perhaps the most intriguing of them is the current Australian Amateur Champion Kazuma Kobori of New Zealand who has full status on the Australasian Tour courtesy of his victory at the Tour School in April, following which he has recorded an outstanding final year in amateur golf.
Kobori, already the winner of an Australasian Tour event when successful at the New Zealand PGA Championship as a 17-year-old amateur, won the Western Amateur (Illinois) and was the leading individual at the Eisenhower Trophy in 2023 and appears on track for a very successful career in the professional ranks.
Other leading amateurs making their professional debut this week include the talented New South Welshman Jeffrey Guan, South Australian Jack Buchanan and Victorian Max Charles, all three coming off a week at the Asia Pacific Amateur Championship at Royal Melbourne last week, Buchanan and Guan members of the Australian Eisenhower Trophy team which finished runner up in Abu Dhabi last month.
Last season’s PGA Tour of Australasia Order of Merit winner, David Micheluzzi, gets his new season underway ahead of becoming a full-fledged member of the DP World Tour when that tour begins its new season at the nearby Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland in late November.
One of the rewards for Micheluzzi’s outstanding last season is membership of the DP World Tour and although he has played sparingly of late his follow-up to last season will be watched with interest.
Anthony Quayle and Aaron Wilkin have been the winners of this event since its move to the rebuilt Nudgee Golf Club, Quayle though will not be at the event as he chases a strong finish to what has been a solid season in Japan this year.
Last year’s winner Wilkin is having a good season on the Asian Development Tour and is also not in this week’s field.
